Digital Arts enquiry: Practice based research

Step in Books

Step in Books create mixed media ‘interactive stories’ using books together with mobile devices. They appear to augment existing children’s books digitally. Their AR children’s books Mur and Wuwu won the Bologna Ragazzi Digital Award in 2017 and 2016 respectively. The work is beautifully designed and there’s a wealth of games, software and technical experience on the team. This leads me to question the level of technical skills and knowledge required to create these digital AR applications.

With regards to my own project, I’m going to focus on the narrative (I am not a writer and am feeling a little anxious about this – aiming to shape the concept into something both dramatic and emotionally engaging) and UX today and will continue to do research around the technical skills required. The story I am working on is about a little bird who wants to escape from a book… the idea began a few years ago as a picture book and the more I thought about it the more it seemed to lend itself to an animation. So, perhaps AR will prove a good combinatory medium.